The Game Awards Nominees Have Been Announced

Nintendo dominates with 23 nominations

With a little over three weeks until the show goes live, we finally have our nominees for the 4th annual The Game Awards.

Many of the obvious frontrunners are here, of course. Destiny 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild all lead the pack with six nominations each. However, Destiny 2 is the only one of the four not to have a Game of the Year nod.

With the aforementioned Horizon, Odyssey and Zelda above, Persona 5 and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds join the Game of the Year fray. It will be quite interesting to see how PUBG fares with the big dogs of this fight. Much has been debated as far as PUBG’s eligibility should go. The game is still technically an early access title. It hits Xbox One’s early access program on December 12th, the same day it sees “official” release for PC. That’s nearly a week after The Game Awards airs.

Interestingly, in the department of Best Handheld Game, there isn’t a single Switch title to be found. Perhaps that is at Nintendo’s behest as they continue to be adamant about labeling the Switch as a console and not a portable. However, Nintendo still dominates that department as well as they are the publisher of each of the five games receiving nominations. In fact, Nintendo appears to have a choke hold on the 2017 The Game Awards in general. The publisher leads the pack with a stunning 23 nominations.

The Game Awards will air live from Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater on Thursday, December 7th at 6:00 p.m. Pacific, 9:00 p.m. Eastern. The show will once again be hosted by Geoff Keighley. For the full list of nominees for this year’s event, checkout the show’s official website here. Or, you can click the YouTube link above and watch the glorious Keighley break it all down over the course of ten minutes. Hey, it’s your time, you do you.